So you’re suffering from TV fatigue: you tried reading the Victor Hugo novels in French that have been propping up the cat litter for ten years, but gave up when you remembered you don’t do French. So now you need something light and easy – in fact, so light and so easy it’s positively trashy. You need Too Hot To Handle on Netflix, which is probably the only time you’ll be seeing a beach this year, but hey, at least it’s full of beautiful people.
Time Magazine’s Judy Berman is blunt: “Too Hot is a thoroughly awful show—a social experiment with a flimsy premise that fails to either yield remarkable results or create interesting characters. But what its makers couldn’t have known during production is that it’s also weirdly relevant in the time of coronavirus.”
In The Guardian Rebecca Nicholson wryly notes “The fact that not having sex on TV now counts as a challenge to be overcome” is pretty strange and that “I did not feel good about gobbling up all eight episodes, nor could I stop myself doing it. It will, inevitably, be massive.”
CNN’s Brian Lowry notes the central premise of the show is that for maximum reward the contestants literally have to keep their hands off each other, “Of course, the no-touching rules… have gained an extra layer of meaning in this age of coronavirus,” but he adds that the show “feels too silly, ultimately, to hook up with – barely generating enough heat to warm a room, much less leave a mark.”
If you want something mindless and cheery, give it a go – otherwise send the cat elsewhere and join Les Miserables.
First shown April 2020. You can watch the trailer by pressing play on the show image or by clicking here.
